Trump suggests arresting Adam Schiff for 'treason'
President Donald Trump and his allies on Monday ratcheted up their campaign against Rep. Adam Schiff as the White House’s Ukraine scandal entered its second week — with Trump again suggesting the House Intelligence chairman committed treason.
Locked in a defensive crouch and staring down an impeachment inquiry, Trump continued to batter the California Democrat for allegedly mischaracterizing his July phone call with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?”
During Trump’s conversation with Zelensky, the president urged his foreign counterpart to work with Attorney General William Barr to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
After Schiff offered a knowingly exaggerated version of the call’s transcript before a meeting of his committee last Thursday, conservative commentators and Republican lawmakers were quick to castigate the congressman on social media and cable news.
The president was unwilling to drop the issue Monday afternoon, complaining about Schiff's remarks to reporters in the Oval Office following a swearing-in ceremony for his new Labor secretary, Eugene Scalia.
“Adam Schiff — representative, congressman — made up what I said. He actually took words and made it up,” Trump said, as Scalia’s family looked on. “The reason is, when he saw my call to the president of Ukraine, it was so good that he couldn't quote from it. Because there was nothing done wrong. It was perfect.”
Trump previously demanded Sunday that Schiff be “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason,” and claimed that his “lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber.”
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, kept up that line of attack Monday, charging that Schiff “didn't embellish” but instead “lied about” the memo the White House released last week summarizing the Zelensky call.
“He stood in front of the American people with millions of people listening and he lied,” Giuliani told the Fox Business Network. “He put on a stupid phony show, just like he lied when he said he had direct evidence of Russian collusion.”
Eric Trump, the president’s son, also assailed Schiff on Monday, telling the hosts of “Fox & Friends” that the congressman “is exactly why we need term limits in this country” and adding: “He’s a total disgrace.”
In addition to his post newly targeting Schiff, Trump sought Monday to cast doubt on the accuracy of a whistleblower complaint that detailed his call with Zelensky and alleged efforts by White House officials to “lock down” records of the conversation.
“The Fake Whistleblower complaint is not holding up. It is mostly about the call to the Ukrainian President which, in the name of transparency, I immediately released to Congress & the public,” Trump tweeted. “The Whistleblower knew almost nothing, its 2ND HAND description of the call is a fraud!”
The president later Monday appeared to reference a report by the conservative publication The Federalist — promoted repeatedly in that morning’s broadcast of “Fox & Friends” — which stated that the U.S. intelligence community between May 2018 and August 2019 had eliminated the first-hand knowledge requirement from its whistleblower complaint form.
“WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT? DRAIN THE SWAMP!” Trump tweeted, writing in another message one minute later: “#FakeWhistleblower.”
An anonymous American intelligence officer filed the complaint in early August, and Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, deemed its allegations credible and “urgent.”
The whistleblower acknowledged in the complaint that he or she “was not a direct witness to most of the events described,” but wrote that the complaint’s allegations were informed by the accounts of “more than half a dozen U.S. officials” provided over the prior four months.
The complaint’s description of the call between Trump and Zelensky is largely similar to the readout the White House produced last Wednesday. Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence, testified before Schiff’s Intelligence committee last Thursday that “the whistleblower's complaint is in alignment with what was released yesterday by the president.”
Trump lashed out Sunday at the whistleblower, asserting that “I deserve to meet my accuser,” as well as “the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect” to the unknown intelligence official.
“Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!” he tweeted.
